The Rahul Gandhi interview: ‘PM candidates are unconstitutional; I won’t step back if MPs ask me to be PM’

Rahul said, BJP has good marketing, but let us wait for the results. (PTI)

In his second televised interview, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said he would not back down from becoming Prime Minister if his MPs asked him to do so. He said this was the constitutional way of choosing the Indian Prime Minister and the concept of a Prime Ministerial candidate, as being pushed by the Opposition BJP, was unconstitutional.

In a 30-minute interview to Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, the Congress vice-president trashed the Gujarat model of growth and said it was benefitting only some people. “One businessman in the state has grown from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 40,000 crore. He has been allotted land as large as Vadodara for just Rs 300 crore. He has got coastline as long as that of Mumbai,” he said in an obvious reference to the Adani group of companies.

Appearing more confident than in his firs interview a couple of months back, Gandhi said the opinion polls will be proven false and the UPA will come back to power. He said the BJP was a party of the corporates and was better equipped in marketing that the Congress.

Gandhi appeared to be on a better footing in this interview, even dropping a couple of jokes here and there. It helped that the interviewer was far less intimidating this time.

Here are tweets of the important points

LIVE: Rahul Gandhi says the Congress campaign is running fine. BJP has good marketing, but let us wait for the results. #RahulAgain